Memeorandum

Prediction Markets

June 30, 2005

Matt Drudge flashes the odds on Hillary (and others ) becoming the next President of the United States:

Odds that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) will win the White House
in 2008 have improved greatly -- at least in the underworld of online
betting, ROLL CALL reports.

At the Web-based sports book, SportsInteraction.com, Clinton's odds of
occupying the White House in 2008 have improved to 5-1. Former New York
Mayor Rudy Giuliani follows with 7-1 odds of winning the presidency in
2008, ahead of former Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.), who fetched 9-1 odds.

New
Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson is fourth with 13-1 odds, followed by Sen.
John McCain (R-Ariz.) with 15-1 odds. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) is last
on the SportsInteraction.com Web site, with 41-1 odds of winning the
White House in 2008.

Here is SportsInteraction.com, the website Roll Call noted. Set against that is my personal fave, TradeSports, which breaks the betting down a bit: Hillary has a 48% chance of becoming the Democratic nominee, and the Democrats have a 51% chance of winning the White House - ergo, she has 25% chance of becoming the next President. My humble calculator translates that to 3-1 odds.

Some of the other candidates also provoke wide disagreement - Gov. Richardson has a 3.4% chance of winning the Dem nomination - figure a 1.7% chance that he will be hearing "Hail to the Chief" on a regular basis, and that translates to roughly 50-1 - if the other site has him fourth at 13-1, they are smoking something (and we have a Bill Richardson story to back that up!).

Tradesports makes Biden the number two Dem with a 10% chance of becoming the nominee; Edwards is at 6.5% (which is about 30-1 for him to win the Presidency).

On the Republican side, Allen at 19% and McCain at 18% lead the pack [Allen leading? How about that?]; Frist is third at 13%, Giuliani is fourth at 10%, and Rice is fifth at 5% (all odds are for winning the Rep nomination).

June 29, 2005

William Safire returns to argue in favor of Times reporter Judith Miller and a reporter's shield law.

He makes a concealed reference to the reporters in the Wen Ho Lee case, who are protecting government sources that apparently felt the government's normal powers of subpoena and arrest were insufficient, and decided to try Dr. Lee in the press.

A free and inquiring press can be a check on government power, or an extension of it - the Wen Ho Lee case does not look like an example of the sort of leak we ought to be protecting.

MORE: As to the Plame case, I agreed with the NY Times before they did - I doubt there is a criminal case here. However, I fail to see why we should be worried about protecting the right of Adminstration officials to put their stories forward anonymously - it is not as if the White House currently lacks for power.

That said, a cogent theory of the information flow in the Plame leak was provided by Cecil Turner in a comment at the Beldar blog - briefly, a State Dept. / INR fellow met both Valerie and Joe at the fateful meeting where Ambassador Wilson was selected to go to Niger. He later presented this connection for the edification and education of the curious higher-ups in State who wondered who this Joe Wilson was, and why he was writing in, and leaking to, the Times. Regrettably, the INR staffer had not been apprised of Ms. Plame's covert past, and here we are.

MORE: Kevin Drum makes the case for a reporter shield law; Mark Kleiman tells us that "I'm not against some protections for the newsgathering process, but I
think a generalized "reporter-source privilege" goes way too far". Mr. Kleiman also buries William Safire - I embrace his spirit, although I would dispute some of his assertions.

Tom Friedman tells us how Ireland went from one of the poorest countries in Europe to one of the richest in less than a generation:

Ireland's advice is very simple: Make high school and college education
free; make your corporate taxes low, simple and transparent; actively
seek out global companies; open your economy to competition; speak
English; keep your fiscal house in order; and build a consensus around
the whole package with labor and management - then hang in there,
because there will be bumps in the road - and you, too, can become one
of the richest countries in Europe.

Earlier, Mr. Friedman also cited national health care. What he does not cite is border control - some of this might be hard for the US to do in the context of our current immigration situation.

Nor does he emphasize the benefits of being subsidized by larger neighbors, as Ireland was by the EU.

That said, other countries within the EU have been subsidized with less impressive results.

MORE: Where were the editors? This, from Friedman's piece, is baffling:

The results have been phenomenal. Today, 9 out of 10 of the world's top
pharmaceutical companies have operations here, as do 16 of the top 20
medical device companies and 7 out of the top 10 software designers.
Last year, Ireland got more foreign direct investment from America than
from China. And overall government tax receipts are way up.

Huh? In context, it seems that Mr. Friedman is trying to shock us with the news that last year the US invested more in Ireland than it did in China. But what he wrote says that China invested less in Ireland than the US did - is that really a surprise?

President Bush's speech has jolted the the NY Times editors into contact with reality:

...Another letter came from an opponent of the invasion who
urged the American left to "get over its anger over President Bush's
catastrophic blunder" and start trying to figure out how to win the
conflict that exists.

No one wants a disaster in Iraq, and Mr.
Bush's critics can put aside, at least temporarily, their anger at the
administration for its hubris, its terrible planning and its inept
conduct of the war in return for a frank discussion of where to go from
here. The president, who is going to be in office for another three and a
half years, cannot continue to obsess about self-justification and the
need to color Iraq with the memory of 9/11. The nation does not want it
and cannot afford it.

The notion that we should focus on what to do next may seem like common sense, but this is real breakthrough stuff. Paul Krugman last week and Nancy Pelosi last night were a lot more interested in discussing the events of 2002 than the events of 2005. And only last week, Times editors were insistent that their opinions be treated as "facts".

Richard Stevenson of the Times covers the speech, and duly notes that some of Bush's critics are infuriated by the conflation of Saddam and Al Qaeda. And we keep saying, this is not a war on Osama, it is a war on terror. Saddam's links to terrorist organizations were welldocumented, and Saddam's regime was a source of instability - both the unpopular sanctions and the presence of US troops in Saudi Arabia motivated terrorist groups including Al Qaeda.

Will the Democrats be able to continue looking forward, and actually contribute to a debate about what to do next? I wonder if they can avoid the temptation of staring in the rear view mirror.

Talking about the past lets them unite around the message that Bush was a lying, corrupt fool. Fine, but as the Times grimly notes, he is our recently re-elected fool, and will be here for a while (but keep hope alive!)

Talking about the future will force Democrats to deal with the same ongoing split in their party that crippled Kerry's candidacy - is this a party committed to seeing Iraq through to a successful resolution, or is it the party of cut and run?

Sixty percent of House Democrats supported the Woolsey Amendment, a "sense of the Congress" effort calling for the President to "develop
a plan as soon as practicable after the date of the enactment of this
Act to provide for the withdrawal of United States Armed Forces from
Iraq". Nancy Pelosi opposed it; Hillary Clinton presumably would have opposed it as well, if it had been offered in the Senate. I am afraid to guess what John Kerry would have said.

Meanwhile, the recent Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that Americans are not fixated on grumbling about the past - despite diminished confidence in both President Bush and Administration pronouncements about progress in Iraq, a "solid majority" understands that we need to stay and finish this.

I caught Nancy Pelosi on NBC, responding to President Bush's speech on Iraq.

First, the face of the Democratic Party has had one too many shots of botox, but let's set aside the cosmetic derogation. Ms. Pelosi was partisan and divisive. Although I am sure this was the tone that the crowd at Lost Kos was looking for, I doubt she tossed enough red meat to feed them - she didn't even mention the Downing Street memos!

To the rest of America, I suspect Ms. Pelosi will have come across as backward looking and negative. As is often the case, Bush is in trouble right up until the moment his opponents commence speaking.

As to Bush's speech, he had a good text and delivered it with confidence. However, if talking could get this done, Dick Cheney would have won this war by now; at this point, I am from Missouri.

MORE: On the subject of cosmetic derogation, I was watching the speech with some kids (ages 8-11) in the room. Key insights:

(a) Bush has big ears;

(b) Nancy Pelosi is scary;

(c) Bush linked 9/11 to Iraq. When Bush said that the insurgents are testing our will, just as our will was tested on 9/11, the ten year old immediately asked with surprise "You mean, the Iraqis attacked us on 9/11?"

"A recent bipartisan group of members of Congress called for an end to the conflict, a withdrawal of US troops, something I don't agree with, but I understand the frustration, the concern, the anxiety that motivates such a statement".

Presumably the Senator is referring to the Woolsey amendment, which failed in the House by a 300-128 vote (60% of House Dems supported it, as did five Republicans), and to the new "Out of Iraq" caucus.

I don't know how many conflicts have to be engaged in during the course
of human history before people finally realize that the only acceptable
timetable for a mission is "when the job is done." Make no mistake:
These seemingly innocent demands for timetables are only meant to
grease the skids towards a political situation where demands for
withdrawal--whether or not the job is done--are made outright.

Senators from both sides of the aisle competed on Monday to extol
the humane treatment of detainees whom they said they saw on a weekend
trip to the military detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. All said
they opposed closing the center.

June 27, 2005

Bill Keller, executive editor of the NY Times, posts some of his thoughts on the new direction of the Times. This continues a discussion we first picked up on in early May.

Editor and Publisher's promises several stories on this; their firstfocuses on Keller's comments about newsroom diversity. Keller also addressed issues of anonymous sourcing and using technolgy to open up the Times, and exhorts Times reporters to get religion. Highlights:

Anonymous Sources:

A year from now, I would like reporters to feel that the use of anonymous sources is not a routine, but an exception, and that if the justification is not clear in the story they will be challenged. A year from now, I would like every backfielder and copy editor to feel it is a right and a responsibility to challenge the use of an unnamed source when it does not measure up to our standards.

Dialogue With The Public:

The proliferation of critics and the growing public cynicism about the news media pose a threat to our authority and credibility that cannot go unanswered.

...With that in mind, I'd like to begin with the following steps:

• On a regular basis — every other week — senior editors of The Times will be available to the public for Q & A forums on our website. (These will not be live, raw chat sessions, but thoughtful answers to serious questions.)

• We will be more systematic in responding to public attacks on our work. When there is a significant or concerted impugning of something we have reported whether the complaints come to us in critiques published elsewhere, from the Internet, from readers or through the company spokesman’s office the first responsibility for alerting us and recommending how to respond will reside with the department head, in consultation with Al Siegal.

Reaching Out to Readers:

We have been more wary than most major newspapers about giving our readers direct access to reporters. There are valid reasons for this: an accessible address opens a reporter to spam, crude personal attacks and orchestrated campaigns that are easy to organize on the Web but can be terribly time-consuming for a reporter on the receiving end. The price of our inaccessibility, though, is that we may send a message of indifference. And e-mail access opens up another avenue for reporters and editors to get ideas and tips that can lead to stories.

...• I have asked Terry Schwadron, in consultation with Al, to oversee the introduction of Web links that will allow readers of Times articles on-line to contact the authors. As recommended by the committee, we will give readers access to "dialogue boxes" that allow them to send a message to a reporter without disclosing the reporter’s actual e-mail address. While we will encourage all reporters to use this system, we will offer any reporter the option to decline.

Reducing Factual Errors:

It’s amazing that some people at this paper believe fact-checking is someone else’s responsibility. It is not. Accuracy is everyone’s responsibility. Let’s begin by being absolutely clear about this: Writers, you are responsible for the accuracy of every fact in your copy — the spelling of names, the date of an event, the accuracy of an address, every fact. No writer at The Times is exempt from this...

• We must, as the committee says, be more alert to nuances of language when writing about contentious issues. The committee picked a few examples — the way the word "moderate" conveys a judgment about which views are sensible and which are extreme, the misuse of "religious fundamentalists" to describe religious conservatives — but there are many pitfalls involved when we try to convey complex ideas as simply as possible, on deadline.

On the related topics of diverse viewpoints and religion, Mr. Keller said this:

I also endorse the committee’s recommendation that we cover religion more extensively, but I think the key to that is not to add more reporters who will write about religion as a beat. I think the key is to be more alert to the role religion plays in many stories we cover, stories of politics and policy, national and local, stories of social trends and family life, stories of how we live. This is important to us not because we want to appease believers or pander to conservatives, but because good journalism entails understanding more than just the neighborhood you grew up in.

Earlier, he had noted that "the daily sections can learn some things from the Magazine, for example, about portraying religious conservatives in an interesting and three-dimensional way."

However, Mr. Keller did not mention the Times' new column on poker (and was it a jolt when they first ran a bridge column? I will know they are pandering when they assign a sports columnist to NASCAR.

MORE: I filed this under "No Kidding": "Even sophisticated readers of The New York Times sometimes find it hard to distinguish between news coverage and commentary in our pages."

The NY Times delivers the terms upon which they will accept the surrender of the Republican Party:

To have the sober conversation about the war in Iraq that America badly needs, it is vital to acknowledge three facts:

The
war has nothing to do with Sept. 11. Saddam Hussein was a sworn enemy
of Washington, but there was no Iraq-Qaeda axis, no connection between
Saddam Hussein and the terrorist attacks on the United States.

...The war has not made the world, or this nation, safer from terrorism.
The breeding grounds for terrorists used to be Afghanistan and Saudi
Arabia; now Iraq has become one. Of all the justifications for invading
Iraq that the administration juggled in the beginning, the only one
that has held up over time is the desire to create a democratic nation
that could help stabilize the Middle East.

...If the war is going according to plan, someone needs to rethink the plan.

The first two points are eminently rebuttable by anyone with a few spare moments, but that does not currently include me. Maybe we can try a Wikitorial, LA Times style, in the comments.

Forget about South Park Conservatives. Matt Bai writes in the NY Times Magazine about the "Hill" that Dems should keep their eye on:

If politicians and pundits are really so desperate to understand the
values of conservative America without leaving their living rooms, then
they should start setting the TiVo to record another animated sitcom,
which Anderson mentions only in passing and which, despite its general
policy of eschewing politics, somehow continues to offer the most
subtle and complex portrayal of small-town voters on television: ''King
of the Hill,'' on Fox. North Carolina's two-term Democratic governor,
Mike Easley, is so obsessed with the show that he instructs his
pollster to separate the state's voters into those who watch ''King of
the Hill'' and those who don't so he can find out whether his arguments
on social and economic issues are making sense to the sitcom's fans.

...The important thing here is that Hank Hill may be a Texan, but he and
his friends could live in any of the fast-developing rural and exurban
areas around Columbus or Phoenix or Atlanta that are bound to become
the political weathervanes of the new century. The families in Arlen
buy American-made pickups, eat at chain restaurants, maniacally water
their lawns and do their shopping at the huge Mega Lo Mart. This could
easily be the setup for a mean parody about rural life in America, in
the same vein as ''South Park,'' but ''King of the Hill,'' which was
created by Mike Judge (who is the voice of Hank and who also created
''Beavis and Butt-head''), has never been so crass. The show's central
theme has always been transformation -- economic, demographic and
cultural. Hank embodies all the traditional conservative values of
those Americans who, as Bill Clinton famously put it, ''work hard and
play by the rules.'' He's a proud gun owner and a Nascar fan. When
Bobby announces that he has landed a job selling soda at the track,
Hank solemnly responds, ''If you weren't my son, I'd hug you.''

And is there a lesson here?

...here's where Democrats should pay close attention -- Hank never
professes an explicit party loyalty, and he and his buddies who sip
beer in the alley don't talk like their fellow Texan Tom DeLay. If Hank
votes Republican, it's because, as a voter who cares about religious
and rural values, he probably doesn't see much choice. But Hank and his
neighbors resemble many independent voters, open to proposals that
challenge their assumptions about the world, as long as those ideas
don't come from someone who seems to disrespect what they believe.

No more sneers? No more "Vote for my health care plan, you racist, homophobic gun nuts"?

Republican strategists can relax.

MORE: Let's stroll down memory lane and reprise Howard's "Gun, God, and gays" debacle, with more from Miracle Max.

HOW SOON THEY FORGET: A long article about the Dems need for a candidate with rural authenticity, and no mention of John Edwards? Ouch.

June 25, 2005

ROVE AND "LIBERALS": Some
defenses of Karl Rove's rolling out of the "stab-in-the-back" ploy to
cover for possible future failure in Iraq have made an important
semantic point. They say that the people I cited - Christopher
Hitchens, Tom Friedman, Paul Berman, Joe Lieberman, The New Republic,
and so on - are not "liberals". They're centrists or mavericks or
oddballs like yours truly. What Rove was doing, they say, is citing
hard-left types like Michael Moore and Moveon.org and Kucinich and the
like. He doesn't mean all mainstream liberals. But this is too clever
by half. The rubric Rove used was the "conservative-liberal" rubric, in
which the entire polity is bifurcated into one type or the other. All
non-liberals are, in Rove's rubric, conservatives; and all
non-conservatives are liberals. This is in keeping with the very
familiar electoral tactic of describing even moderate or centrist
Democrats as "liberals" with as broad a brush as possible.

Really? Andrew Sullivan does some political theorizing - does he mentally divide the US into "liberals" and "conservatives", or does he think in terms of a liberal base, a conservative base, and a great unwashed stumbling about elsewhere in the political savanna?

And more to the point, what might Karl Rove have been thinking when he gave a speech to a small, out-of-the-mainstream political party in New York City? Was Rove caricaturing liberals at a partisan event (horrors!), or thinking in base terms?

Some evidence for the latter can be found earlier in Rove's speech when he says that "liberals believe there is an absolute unlimited right to abortion." C'mon - all liberals? Karl Rove is surely aware that the partial-birth abortion ban passed the Congress with Democratic votes under both Bill Clinton and George Bush.

White House Counselor Dan Bartlett, speaking with Norah O'Donnell of MSNBC, hewed to the line that "liberals" meant "MoveOn liberals", and tried to switch the conversation back to Dick Durbin. And in Friday's press briefing, Scott McClellan said "Soylent green is people". NO, he said that "It's still puzzling why Democratic leaders were coming to the defense of
liberal organizations like moveon.org and people like Michael Moore."

As to the merits of the charge that the far left lacked martial ardor, I lack polling data on the specifics views of the liberal base. However, someone was opposed to the use of ground troops in Afghanistan (and a smaller group of someones opposed bombing).

Well. The truth of what was in Karl's heart may be unknowable, and is probably irrelevant - the larger question is, how will this play out as political theatre.

As a straw in the wind, if Dan Bartlett is relying on the "parse my lips" defense, that will be hard to spin as a proud display of force and conviction by the White House. One might almost use the word "backpedaling".

Joe Gandelman tells us that Rove may have united liberals against Rove. You mean they weren't already? Joe also finds some Republican dissent.

As a matter of political tactics, Karl will be a genius if, a week from now, the media is replaying every foolish thing any liberal ever said about war. But no whining from the right about media bias if they don't - Karl has to know the water in which he swims, and in which he floated this story.

And might Karl not be a genius? Republicans have made a great effort linking the war in Iraq with the war on terror. However, Karl's rhetorical sally opens the door for Democrats to separate the war in Afghanistan from the war in Iraq. If the next week delivers a parade of Smart, Militant Democrats who favored the war in Afghanistan but opposed the war in Iraq (or oppose its current conduct), then Rove was something other than a genius.

That said, Karl does know his opponent. Chuck Schumer of NY manages to ride in exactly the wrong direction:

"I don't think people should play politics with
9-11. We all have our different political views, but 9-11 is sacred to
all New Yorkers and to all Americans,” Schumer said.

Uh huh. If someone could point me to Schumer's comments denouncing Fahrenheit 9/11, and his denunciation of Moore's presence as a guest of honor at the Democratic Convention, I'll be quick to post it.

"Karl Rove should immediately and fully apologize for his remarks or he
should resign," Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the Democratic minority
leader, said in a statement. "Dividing our country for political gain
is an insult to all Americans and to the common memory we all carry
with us from that day."

Does Hillary get it? In the video featured at her website, she lectures Don Rumsfeld on the perils of partisanship, and respectfully exhorts him to encourage others to raise the tone of the national debate. Rumsfeld's response is not included, so I can not tell you whether he laughed out loud, or mentioned Harry Reid's "liar and loser" description of George Bush.

My free advice to Dems is simple - whining about partisanship and divisiveness is beside the point; explaining that Martial Dems support smart wars, but not the war in Iraq, is the more promising road.

"My own then-unaffiliated Web site, which I started prior to
joining MoveOn, said U.S. response should be 'moderate and restrained,'
to avoid provoking more terrorism and enmity against the U.S.," he went
on. "Only two days after the attack on the towers, with no proof of who
was responsible, urging care was appropriate. Of course I believe the
attack on the camps in Afghanistan, which came weeks later, was
appropriate, as was other military action against Al Qaeda," Pariser
said.

Here is a timeline about the related organization - since the petition was submitted on Oct. 9, the "two days after" argument is a bit disingenuous.

June 24, 2005

New Jersey intends to move its primary up to increase its clout in the 2008 Presidential process. The Times does not mention it, so let me add that NJ is a *very* expensive state in which to campaign because of its peculiar television market - the big stations are in Philadelphia and New York, so most of each ad buy is wasted on out-of-state viewers.

Which means? Beats me, but I will Boldly Conclude that early fundraising will be a key to success in 2008. And name recognition won't hurt either.

If a front-loaded schedule with expensive states helps anyone on the Dem side other than Hillary, I can't think of them now.

Pual Krugman leaves a puzzle for us in his latest column - is he strangling a strawman, or can his readers help him back this up?

Let me explain. The United States will soon have to start reducing
force levels in Iraq, or risk seeing the volunteer Army collapse. Yet
the administration and its supporters have effectively prevented any
adult discussion of the need to get out.

On one side, the people who sold this war, unable to face up to the
fact that their fantasies of a splendid little war have led to
disaster, are still peddling illusions: the insurgency is in its "last
throes," says Dick Cheney. On the other, they still have moderates and
even liberals intimidated: anyone who suggests that the United States
will have to settle for something that falls far short of victory is
accused of being unpatriotic.

We need to deprive these people of their ability to mislead and
intimidate. And the best way to do that is to make it clear that the
people who led us to war on false pretenses have no credibility, and no
right to lecture the rest of us about patriotism.

Here we go again - moderates and liberals are ready to battle Osama, but Scott McClellan and Sean Hannity have them too terrified to speak the truth.

This should be easy. Can anyone come up with some examples of (a) a notable moderate or liberal (or anyone, even Chuck Hagel) warning us that we may have to settle for less than total victory in Iraq? I don't remember many major Dems arguing that line, but I miss a lot.

And of course, (b) will be the assault on their patriotism. If the assault could be by an elected Republican or a Cabinet officer, that would be great - since Glenn Reynolds, Matt Drudge, Rush Limbaugh, and Bill O'Reilly have not been elected, discrediting Bush may not silence them. And naturally, assaults on their judgment won't count.

Of course, my guess is that this scenario is only playing out in Krug-world; here under the yellow sun, major Dems are not warning of defeat, and then being crushed. But do let me know - currently, I am stumped as to how to rebut this, since Krugman lacked the space to include a name or two.

UPDATE: A winner in the comments from Brad R. But what about the new "Out of Iraq" caucus - when do we crush them remorselessly? [Links later, or see the comments]

Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks
and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and
wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.

Here's excerpt (2):

Let
me just put this in fairly simple terms: Al Jazeera now broadcasts the
words of Senator Durbin to the Mideast, certainly putting our troops in
greater danger. No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals.

OK. First, let me say that they don't pay me quite enough to wade into this - even though Karl was speaking to a partisan audience, he had to know this would make news, and he might have opted for a more temperate tone.

Second, let me say that they don't need to pay me - I live for this nonsense, so let's bring it on!

Let's start with John Cole, the Contrary Conservative, who is outraged. Mr. Cole reminds us that on Sept. 14, 2001, Congress passed the Use of Force resolution by votes of 420-1 and 98-0, with no mention of the word "therapy".

Good point. Let me remind Mr. Cole that last Palm Sunday, Congress passed the Terry Schivao Relief Act with the unanimous consent of the Senate. Does he consider the two parties to have been equally enthusiastic in her defense, and equally responsible for the subsequent turns of event? Or, is it possible that one of the parties went along for the ride, since they had not had time to do any polling or focus-grouping?

OK, lets get some momentum here. First, some news accounts are a bit more careful than others in extracting the red meat. With respect to excerpt (1), the Times tells us that "Citing calls by progressive groups to respond carefully to the attacks, Mr. Rove said...".

Emphasis added - if Mr. Rove was citing progressive groups such as MoveOn, then his first quote is directed at specific liberals, not all Democrats [The transcript verifies this - see UPDATE]. Perhaps the Reps were ready for this line - the Mehlman delivers a list of specifics (but I don't see the word "therapy" anywhere, not even at the NRO). Since the phrase "moderation and restraint" appears in both Rove's comments and the MoveOn petition, we are on solid ground here. If you missed that subtlety, don't worry - both Kevin Drum and Josh Marshall missed it as well; too angry to read, maybe.

And I had so much fun mocking Gen. Wesley Clark's proposed "response" to the 9/11 terrorists that I will recycle it here. My Unsympathetic Summary - [Clark] would have talked them to death, and then commenced boring their heirs".

The second Rove quote is trickier, so we will rely on the time-tested "out of context" defense. It is certainly the case that some of Durbin's critics last week focused on his ghastly judgment in his choice of words, and belabored him for handing a propaganda victory to our enemies and endangering our troops. These critics may well have thought that Durbin let his desire to attack the Administration supercede his judgment and responsibility as a Senator - there was a time when politics stopped at the water's edge.

If that was how Mr. Rove was approaching this, then "No more needs to be said about the motives of liberals" means "these guys will say anything to attack Bush", not "these guys want to endanger our troops".

Well - lacking a transcript [now available], folks will leap to their preferred conclusions. My guess - this is a terrible debate for Dems. The AnkleBiter has more on that.

And a bit of free advice - the Dems leapt immediately to the defense of their own honor, but let Durbin's criticism of our troops hang out there for a week. Different priorities might work better another time.

MORE: Did Rove criticize "liberals" or "Democrats"? Although the news accounts use them interchangeably, the direct quotes from Rove seem to refer to "liberals". Of course, Durbin is a Democrat, but finding a liberal isn't so easy - just ask John Kerry.

And the AP is walking back a bit - their first story by Sam Dolnick says this:

Rove said the Democratic Party made the mistake of calling for "moderation and restraint" after the terrorist attacks.

He added that groups linked to the Democratic Party made the mistake of
calling for "moderation and restraint" after the terrorist attacks.

Emphasis added - since "moderation and restraint" is in the Move On petition and the Mehlman press package, we know who he meant.

UPDATE: The NY Times one day later, on page A16 (roughly); Glenn has lots; Rich Lowry makes us laugh. And from the transcript - Rove is contrasting conservatism with liberalism; after covering economic and social issues, he segues to national security. An extended excerpt follows:

June 23, 2005

Wait a minute, I hear you saying - US citizens arrested in Chicago are not enemy combatants entitled to the protection of the Geneva Convention, are they? Of course not!

So why does the biggest city in Durbin's home state treat their prisoners worse than the US treats prisoners at Guantanamo? I cannot say, but perhaps this will inspire another Krugman column about the perils of one-party rule.

OK, fun's fun, but this latest use of the internet is deeply troubling:

Chicago Police Put Arrest Photos of Prostitution Suspects Online

The Chicago Police Department began posting on its Web site on
Tuesday photographs, names and partial addresses of people who were
arrested on charges of soliciting prostitutes in a move intended to
embarrass offenders and deter people from committing such crimes.

"If
we can do anything to get a john to think twice about coming into
Chicago communities to solicit a prostitute, we think we're addressing
the problem," said Dave Bayless, a Police Department spokesman.

...

Mr. Bayless said he was not concerned about posting photos of people who had been arrested but not convicted of crimes.

"Every
day in this office we send out mug shots of individuals charged with
crimes, and newspapers publish those photos," he said.

A spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois said it had not taken a position on the issue and had no comment.

...Several cities, including Durham, N.C.; Akron, Ohio; and Denver, post
names and photographs of people who are arrested in or convicted of
prostitution-related crimes on police Web sites or local television.

Well. Every day, the Chicago Police Dept. sent out photos and news editors were given a chance to exert a bit of judgment and place the photos in some context. None of that is happening here. And why can't they wait a bit and post this information after the arrest has led to a conviction?

Sidebar - Dead tree readers are advised of the website, and see some sample photos. Dead-tree readers also get this paragraph, which the on-line edition drops:

City officials in Oakland, Calif. and a neighborhood association in Omaha post photographs of such offenders on billboards. In addition to posting arrest photos in prostitution cases, the Dallas Police Department also posts photographs of people who are arrested on charges of public lewdness and indecent exposure.

Here is Dallas. I feel like the internet changes everything, in terms of dissemination, but I suppose this is legal (which does not, of course, make it right). If Sen. Durbin commences to grasp for historical parallels, I hope he remembers that "1984" was fiction.

June 22, 2005

Via Glenn, we meet Brian Leiter, a University of Texas professor of law and philosophy who has made up his mind to identify and out the so-far anonymous Juan Non-Volokh. Let's reprise the professor's rationale:

There are occasions, to be sure, where anonymity is
warranted, but, in general, I am of the view that people should own
their words--among other things, they tend to behave better when they
must own their words (and when they don't behave well, they also get to
own the consequences, which is only just). The idea that Juan
Non-Volokh should get a free pass to be a venal misreader of what
others write, as well as a serial spewer of insults, strikes me as
deeply unjust. He can insult and misread all he wants, but he ought to
own his words, so that he can enjoy their consequences as well.

So who is Juan Non-Volokh? I intend to find out and to post that
information here in due course. I welcome your help...and I promise to
keep my sources secret!

Apparently Juan Non Volokh misread this post. Venally. Following Prof. Leiter's exhortation, I too read his original post for what seemed like an hour, but was probably only five minutes; after learning about yet another professor with such limited reasoning skills that he was unfit to carry Leiter's briefcase, I felt I had caught the flavor, invoked the Eighth Amendment, and skipped to the controversial UPDATES.

However, folks interested in opining on the merits (or fans of the Bloviated Condescending Paranoid style) are encouraged to wade in. Just don't come whining to me when your brain gets damaged... [Although he survived!]

My issue - has Leiter presented a legitimate reason to out a fellow blogger? I had thought the blogosphere operated on a (sometimes disturbingly small) level of trust and mutual respect. For example, it is very easy to leave spoof comments under someone else's name, or to send faux e-mails, but very few people do it.

Similarly, I suspect that the computer jockeys out there could probably crack most "anonymous" bloggers, if they made doing so an important part of their day. And, although it is easy to speculate about possible conflicts of interest (Was 'Atrios' a press spokesman by day and a blogger by night?), it hardly seems that Leiter has identified a problematic conflict meriting follow-up in the present case.

Now, Leiter is clearly not susceptible to reason from anyone on the right, but my impression us that there are many anonymous lefties who would prefer not to see the blogosphere adopt the standard Leiter suggests. Leiter, it is worth noting, is a tenured professor with none of the employment-related concerns anony-bloggers often invoke. However, we applaud his courage in his one-man crusade to make the blogosphere safe for those with tenure.

I am proud to say that Leiter is a lefty, and I hope some of the voices of reason from his side of the aisle will contact him and encourage him to re-direct his energies.

His e-mail is presented on his site. I am discouraging righties from wasting their bits or bytes - you may enjoy venting, but he will enjoy pretending he is a hero standing up to the Right Wing Machine. Of course, Leiter has not enabled either trackbacks or comments at his blog, and I am pretty sure it is not because he gets too much traffic, so I think we can guess that he is not interested in feedback in any case.

UPDATE: Events precede me - Ogged gets results! Sort of - although he modifies his stance in Ogged's comments, Leiter has yet to post a definitive statement of non-pursuit on his own blog. Tricky - doing so would amount to an admission of error. But maybe he can depict himself as a calm, sensible team player! Uh huh.

There was no evidence of Bush's "dissembling" at the time of the last
election as clear as the recent London memos, and what evidence of
dissembling there was was hardly front-and-center in the campaign.
(One might have thought historians would have somewhat better
historical memory when it comes to events of such recent vintage!)

Hmm, so "Bush lied" was not a part of the campaign? Neither was Fahrenheit 911, I guess. Michael Moore sat in the premiere box at something other than the Democratic Convention - a baseball game, maybe. Joe Wilson, Richard Clarke - figments, as were their best-selling books. And John Kerry was as cryptic as a fortune cookie with these remarks in his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention:

As president, that is my first pledge to you tonight: As president, I will restore trust and credibility to the White House.

...
I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into war.

Never happened. Not on the Leiter-side, anyway.

LAST GASP: I meant to mention my creative, non-proprietary defense strategy for Juan, which I call "Let A Thousand Non Volokhs Bloom" - find a few (or a lot) of folks with the appropriate law school tenure track resume, and let them all claim to be Juan Non Volokh.

Since Leiter is a genius, this won't fool him forever, but given his writing style (never use a sentence when three paragraphs will suffice, and don't spare the sneers), no one will endure to the last chapter of his final expose.

Now, I *know* that back in the day, there were periodic discussion in the blogosphere about the merits and ethics of anony-blogging (these were not quite as frequent as the "where are the female bloggers?" discussions, but they were pretty frequent). This Insta-Roundup from 2002 is a great start - back then, it was lefties that were the bigger boosters of anonyblogging, as I am sure Leiter knows. We also have some 2004 action by William Valicella, but if anyone wants to remind me of a timeless classic, that would be great.

UPDATE: Prof. Leiter has yet another update, which he manages to limit to six paragraphs. His ignorance of blogospheric custom and history is on display here:

In view of the extraordinary conservative pity fest going on for Mr.
Non-Volokh at the various right-wing blogs (you would think there is
actually a right to blog anonymously enforceable against
private parties), conjoined with the predictable smears and (guess
what?) misreadings, it's worth re-emphasizing a few points...

Which he does, with the pith, wit and charm to which we are becoming accustomed. Apparently (we learn), Leiter is right and Non Volokh is wrong as to whether Non Volokh is better off blogging anonymously. I told you Leiter was pretty smart (actually, I think Leiter told you that), but this level of omniscience is extraordinary.

Now, does he really think there is an "extraordinary outpouring" of support for Juan Non Volokh? Then how would he characterize the support for Atrios back when Atrios and his secret identity nearly become collateral damage in the Luskin/Krugman feud?

I am sure that this is not exhaustive, but just from glancing at these posts by Dan Drezner and Atrios himself I would guess that fifty bloggers threw in their two cents (making an even dollar!)

So far, Technorati shows a bit less than that in response to Leiter's silly attention-seeking behavior - that looks like nine responses.

But stay with it, Prof! I, at least, am still reading.

STILL MORE: I stand corrected - one might well argue that it is "extraordinary" that we are reading this chap at all. Not for much longer!

Sen. Durbin has finally apologized for his Guantanamo remarks. Readers trapped in Timesworld will never know that some leading Dems may have provided the straw that broke the Senator's back (we are assuming that the mayor of Chicago still has some swing in Senator Durbin's home state of Illinois; Mayor Daley's criticism of Sen. Durbin did not make the Times.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg of the Times presents Sen. Durbin as the victim of insensitive Republicans:

After a steady drumbeat of criticism from Republicans, Senator
Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, apologized Tuesday for
likening American mistreatment of detainees to the acts of "Nazis,
Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime - Pol Pot or others - that
had no concern for human beings."

Mr. Durbin, the second-ranking Democrat in the Senate, made those
comments on the Senate floor last week and has been taking a pummeling
from Republicans ever since.

Monday night, the Senate Republican leader, Bill Frist of Tennessee,
and five other top Senate Republicans sent the Democratic leader,
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, a letter calling Mr. Durbin's statements
"hyperbolic, insensitive and inaccurate."

By Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Durbin, who had earlier said he regretted
any misunderstanding his comments caused, went to the Senate floor to
read a carefully worded mea culpa that lasted four minutes. In it, he
acknowledged that "some may believe that my remarks crossed the line,"
and said he had used "a poor choice of words" and never intended any
disrespect for American soldiers.

"I'm sorry if anything that I said caused any offense or pain to
those who have such bitter memories of the Holocaust, the greatest
moral tragedy of our time," he said, adding, "I'm also sorry if
anything I said in any way cast a negative light on our fine men and
women in the military."

Mr. Durbin was praised by other Democrats, including Mr. Reid, who
himself has drawn criticism for calling President Bush a "loser."

AP readers get a hint that there was bipartisan criticism in the lead paragraph:

Under fire from Republicans and some fellow Democrats, Sen. Dick Durbin
apologized Tuesday for comparing American interrogators at the
Guantanamo Bay prison camp to Nazis and other historically infamous
figures.

Then, in paragraph ten, the AP has this:

On Tuesday, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley — a fellow Democrat — added his
voice to the chorus of criticism, saying, "I think it's a disgrace to
say that any man or woman in the military would act like that."

The Washington Post starts off with the Republicans On Attack story line, but patient readers will get this in paragraph fifteen:

The Anti-Defamation League on Thursday joined lawmakers and other
groups in calling for an apology for comparing the activities of U.S.
troops to those of Nazis. Then, Chicago's Democratic mayor, Richard M.
Daley, declared: "I think it's a disgrace to say that any man or woman
in the military would act like that."

Democrats continue to enjoy sunshine and cooling breezes in Timesworld. Well, except when the ants show up.

MORE: Oh, you already guessed - the Times is ignoring the comments of the Anti-Defamation League on this topic as well. Evidently, inapt use of Holocaust comparisons is not a subject of interest to Times readers. Who knew?

UPDATE: The Dead-tree Times ducked Dean's apology for the anti-Semitic drift taken by and around John Conyers event last week. Naturally, the print edition also ducked Eric Cantor, House Republican, although their website runs an AP story which includes this:

Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the sole Jewish Republican in the
House, escalated the cross-party bashing Tuesday when he criticized
what he said was the anti-Israel, anti-Semitic rhetoric of prominent
Democrats.

Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean, himself a constant target of
GOP attack for his broad swipes at Republicans, last week disavowed
literature distributed at a recent Democratic gathering that implied
that Israel was involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

''While I appreciate Howard Dean's apology, I wonder if his apology
applies to all of his fellow Democrats' anti-Israel and anti-Semitic
rhetoric?'' Cantor said in a statement [here], listing nine examples over the
past few years of what he said were Democrats making inappropriate
remarks about Jews or Israel.

June 21, 2005

The NY Times has more coverage of Operation Spear - US Marines are watching Iraqi insurgents battle foreign fighters. Winds of Change has a terrific post with lots of related links; below are some excerpts from the Times:

Marines See Signs Iraq Rebels Are Battling Foreign Fighters

Late Sunday night, American marines watching the skyline from their second-story perch in an abandoned house here saw a curious thing: in the distance, mortar and gunfire popped, but the volleys did not seem to be aimed at them.

In the dark, one spoke in hushed code words on a radio, and after a minute found the answer.

"Red on red," he said, using a military term for enemy-on-enemy fire.

Marines patrolling this desert region near the Syrian border have for months been seeing a strange new trend in the already complex Iraqi insurgency. Insurgents, they say, have been fighting each other in towns along the Euphrates from Husayba, on the border, to Qaim, farther west. The observations offer a new clue in the hidden world of the insurgency and suggest that there may have been, as American commanders suggest, a split between Islamic militants and local rebels.

A United Nations official who served in Iraq last year and who consulted widely with militant groups said in a telephone interview that there has been a split for some time.

"There is a rift," said the official, who requested anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the talks he had held. "I'm certain that the nationalist Iraqi part of the insurgency is very much fed up with the Jihadists grabbing the headlines and carrying out the sort of violence that they don't want against innocent civilians."

The nationalist insurgent groups, "are giving a lot of signals implying that there should be a settlement with the Americans," while the Jihadists have a purely ideological agenda, he added.

John Burns wrote about too few troops, including too few troops to secure Iraq's borders, last Sunday. The Times also covered that at the outset of Operation Spear (and URL geeks should note the Times header for the latest story)

June 20, 2005

I welcome all theories that can explain the Hyde-to-Jekyll transformation that has overtaken Kos of the Daily Kos.

One week ago, he was his characteristically charming, gracious self as he waxed on Sen. Durbin's decision to compare US troops to Nazis:

The latest moronic Right-Wing smear attack

TalkLeft first alerted us to the latest cause célèbre of the Right Wing Media Borg -- the effort to defend torture at all costs. And caught in the crosshairs is Sen. Durbin, who had the unmitigated gall to call it like it is...

To the pea brains on the Right, incapable of reading the English
language in its most basic, unuanced form, they claim Durbin is calling
our troops Nazis. The Wingnutosphere is making that claim. Rush is
making that claim. Hannity is making that claim. Drudge is making that
claim. Look to Fox News to jump on the bandwagon tomorrow.

...Really, what is the Right trying to accomplish here? Inflict so much
pain on Durbin that others will think twice before they levy legitimate
criticisms of the war? Are they so hell-bent on their political
correctness that any criticisms of the war effort is considered
treasonous?

...Instead, they try to shut down a US senator reading from an FBI report.
From Bush's FBI. Because the truth hurts. So we must supress it. And
we'll do it by shedding crocodile tears for the troops. Because who
gives a shit about them, so long as our heroic, do-no-wrong President
looks good on the evening news.

Well, I stand with Durbin. Proudly. Because opposing torture is the
Right Thing, despite violating the wingnut manual of political correct
speech. And the rest of the Senate Democratic caucus better be standing
with him as well.

You are either for torture, or against it. Let the chips fall where they may.

Yeah, yeah, the usual calm and reasoned rhetoric from the left. Nothing new here.

And yes, one might respond that you are either for comparing our troops to Nazis, or against it, and that a person's view on that issue can be held independently of their view as to the conduct of some of our troops and interrogators in Guantanamo.

But normally, attempting these subtle distinctions is a waste of time.

Anyway, here is the big mystery - a Mighty Change has come over the Mighty Kos. A mere one week later, Kos is on Durbin again. After praising an Andrew Sullivan post, he says this:

Remember, this is not an ideological issue. Liberals are always against
torture (and were consistently against Saddam's torture when the US was
financing him). Conservatives are against torture as well. Remember, it
was one of their justifications for this war.
What we have are not conservative trying to justify the torture -- or even celebrate it -- it's blowhard partisans.

Huh? Where have all the moronic wingnuts gone? All gone, except for a few blowhard partisans? Shall we thank Mr. Sullivan for what we assume will be a short-lived transformation?

If anyone can tell me what may have prompted Kos to attempt to reposition himself (however briefly) back within hailing distance of the lunatic fringe, I would love to hear it.

Put me firmly in John Hinderaker's camp - I don't buy the theory that the Downing Street memos are not accurate depictions of the pre-war discussions going on within Blair's government. However, that is just one man's opinion.

To liven things up a bit, I will answer a puzzle posed by the Captain, deliver a stumper of my own, and put on my tin-foil hat to remind folks of the right way to run a scam.

The Captain's Puzzle - Ed Morrissey notes the June 14 Raw Story chat with reporter Michael Smith in which Mr. Smith describes the steps he took to protect his source, and the legal motivation. Let me excerpt a bit from that:

“I was given them last September while still on the [Daily] Telegraph,” Smith, who now works for the London Sunday Times, told RAW STORY. “I was given very strict orders from the lawyers as to how to handle them.”

“I first photocopied them to ensure they were on our paper and
returned the originals, which were on government paper and therefore
government property, to the source,” he added.

The Butler Committee,
a UK commission looking into WMD, has quoted the documents and accepted
their authenticity, along with British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw.
Smith said all originals were destroyed in order to both protect the
source and the journalist alike.

“It was these photocopies that I worked on, destroying them shortly
before we went to press on Sept 17, 2004,” he added. “Before we
destroyed them the legal desk secretary typed the text up on an old
fashioned typewriter.”

The copying and re-typing were necessary because markings on the
originals might have identified his source, Smith said. The documents
below were leaked last September, prior to the US election. The
document known as DSM was published after the below documents.

“The situation in Britain is very difficult but with regard to
leaked documents the police Special Branch are obliged to investigate
such leaks and would have come to the newspaper's office and or my home
to confiscate them,” he explained. “We did destroy them because the
Police Special Branch were ordered to investigate.”

Well. I am taking at face value his brief account of British law; about all I know is that when some move character murmurs "Official Secrets Act", the other characters all put on deeply concerned faces.

Why an old-fashioned typewriter? Why not just retype them on a
computer, if you've already decided not to work from the originals? It
looks like an attempt to fake people into believing that the documents
produced by Smith were the originals.

Why an old-fashioned typewriter? Because if I ask some credible typist to transcribe what he/she sees with a mechanical typewriter, I won't be able to re-edit his work to my satisfaction as easily as I could if he handed me a floppy disc with a Word file.

If this ever came to court, we might hear testimony from a typist who swore that he retyped, verbatim, the memos Mr. Smith delivered to him. We might hear an expert testify that these re-typed documents have not subsequently been altered. And we might be left believing that any transcription errors were bad luck, rather than sinister political design. Would we be as easily convinced if Word documents purporting to be transcriptions were floating from person to person?

Now, my stumper - why, oh why can't we have a better press corps? We need more reporters who (a) read the occasional Le Carre novel, (b) have a cup of coffee in the morning, and periodically thereafter, and (c) read the documents on which they are attempting to report.

In the Sunday Times' online text of the briefing paper (entitled "Iraq: Conditions for Military Action"
) the London paper says it omitted one page "in order to protect the
identity of its source." That suggests that the source's name appears
in or could be inferred from the full document.

Is that what it suggests? That would make perfect sense - if we thought that no one in the Blair government could open their personal files and read the last page of their own copy of that memo.

If we imagine that an able-bodied (and -minded) police investigator will think to take that step, then hiding the last page from Times readers can only serve to dampen speculation amongst the public at large; it cannot possibly serve to conceal the leaker from an investigation by insiders of the Blair government.

Well, was the Sunday Times that daft? No, the problem is on this side of the pond. Here is what the Times wrote:

The paper, produced by the Cabinet Office on
July 21, 2002, is incomplete because the last page is missing. The
following is a transcript rather than the original document in order to
protect the source.

As of June 12, the Times was quite clear that they were presenting a transcript for source protection (although they had not advertised that fact that the originals had been returned, and the copies of the originals burned.) As to why the last page is missing, the Times does not offer an explanation, nor do I (yet!). But the WaPo has misread the Times caveat, and their theory that concealing the last page will conceal the source makes little sense.

However, it shines a light for the tin-foil crowd! If the missing page really does reveal the leaker, than the Blair government must, by now, know who it is. In which case, Tony Blair may be tacitly approving these torpedos.

And why not? His election is over, and who knows what deals he made in order to placate his angry left? Maybe Bush is the real target of these leaks, and not Blair.

Which suggests another point - only the Blair government can authenticate these memos. So if this is an anti-war, anti-Bush cabal operating within the Blair government with Blair's consent, about all Bush and his supporters can do is ride it out. (Now, fitting Blair's press conference with Bush into this theory is beyond me; hey, I don't even think I believe this theory anyway! But give me a screenplay credit when the movie comes out.)

Last thought - all this chatter just gives the memos more oxygen. 'Nuff said.

Ed Klein, newly notorious for Drudge's blurb of his new "Truth About Hillary" book, is interviewed by K Lo of NRO. Jesse Taylor wallops Ed Klein, thereby saving us the aggravation. (We rate his post "R" for violence and language, so any young 'uns reading this should scoot over there now.)

The one point made by Mr. Klein that seems to merit a follow-up is this:

Klein: Because it is written by a journalist with impeccable credentials (Newsweek, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, Parade), who has no political agenda.

My previous book, The Kennedy Curse, was also the object of disparagement and vilification — and it has since become clear that everything I wrote was true.

So he says. We throw open the floor (also the walls and ceiling) in the comments section: Has anyone scouted for reviews and reappraisals of his Kennedy book? What controversies did Klein create, and how are they viewed today? Is it now clear that everything he wrote was true?

It will be interesting to see whether Matt Drudge inadvertently killed this book, but I just don't want to touch it.

What is their congressman going on about, Times readers must be wondering? Like Howard Dean, NYC congressman Jerry Nadler has denounced the anti-Israel, anti-Semitic comments made at a recent Democratic event hosted by John Conyers.

NY Sun readers are being kept abreast of developments; however, although NY Times readers were apprised of Conyer's event, the Times has sheltered them from news of the anti-semitic comments, as well as any news of either Dean's or Nadler's denunciation.

In fact, Howard Dean seems to have disappeared from Timesworld since he was spanked by Capitol Hill Dems in the June 10 edition.

Can it be that anti-Semitic pamphlets being distributed inside DNC headquarters during a DNC event is not of interest to Times readers? Even though it prompts a disavowal from the DNC chairman?

Can it be that anti-Isarel remarks at an event staged by House Democrats is of interest to a NYC congressman, but not readers of the Times?

Can it be that Byron Calame, Public Editor of the Times, will want to respond to this?

While looking for more on Sen. Durbin's historical parallels and (parallel universe), I found this. Which didn't help (other than through the inspirational power of laughter), but how was Google to know?

If this Sunday Durbin-fest is any indication, Mark Steyn and the right blogosphere are looking hungry like the wolf. Censuring Durbin? Who knows?

As to my to-be-continued search - it seems a likely bet that Sen. Durbin has, at some point, called for the censure of a fellow Senator. It might be helpful to discover the circumstances.

June 18, 2005

Robert F. Maguire Jr., the chief pilot of Operation Magic Carpet,
which evacuated more than 40,000 Jewish refugees from Yemen to the
newly created state of Israel between late 1948 and early 1950, died on
June 10 at his home in Northridge, Calif. He was 94.

He died of natural causes, said his son Robert F. Maguire III.

Starting in November 1947, when the United Nations voted to
partition Palestine, Arabs and Jews were at war. Pogroms against the
Jews of Yemen soon followed. In an operation that was arduous,
dangerous and secret, nearly the entire Jewish population of Yemen was
evacuated beginning in December 1948.

The flight from Yemen to Israel, a journey of more than 1,400 miles,
was almost entirely over hostile territory. Though the evacuation was
kept secret for fear of sabotage, the planes were routinely fired on by
Egyptian forces. Fuel was scarce. Pilots were warned that if they were
forced to land in enemy territory, the passengers, and perhaps the
crew, risked being executed.

Requiring a little more than a year and 380 flights, Operation Magic
Carpet evacuated 40,000 to 50,000 Yemenite Jews without loss of life.
David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, was reported to have
called Mr. Maguire "the Irish Moses." The writer Leon Uris based a
character in his 1958 novel, "Exodus," on him...

There's more.

The Times says he is an Episcopalian; a year ago, he was passing as an Irish Catholic at the Simon Wiesenthal Center. I can scarcely tell the difference myself...

MIAMI, June 17 - Gov. Jeb Bush asked a state prosecutor on Friday to
investigate the circumstances of Terri Schiavo's collapse, saying a new
autopsy report revealed a possible gap between when Ms. Schiavo fell
unconscious and when her husband called paramedics.

Let's skip down a few paragraphs to learn more about the discrepancy:

Governor Bush, who vehemently fought the court-ordered removal of
Ms. Schiavo's feeding tube, said he decided to seek an investigation
after speaking with Dr. Jon R. Thogmartin, the medical examiner who
conducted the autopsy, on Tuesday, a day before his report was
released. According to records, the report says, a 911 call was placed
about 5:40 a.m. on Feb. 25, 1990.

But Mr. Schiavo said in an interview with CNN's Larry King in 2003
that he found his wife on the floor outside their bedroom about 4:30
a.m. and quickly called 911.

Huh? An unsworn statement to Larry King thirteen years after the fact triggers an investigation? And what will the investigators do after Mr. Schiavo, following Steve Martin's legal advice, says "I forgot"? Indict him for being a bad television guest?

The NY Times website has the AP coverage of Dean's apology, but if the print edition covers this, I can't find it - oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we go into the tank for Howard Dean.

One wonders how far the Times will go to maintain the Cone of Silence over this. Possible new motto - Lots of the News That's Fit to Print.

Good job by Steve Antler (but I noticed the Times whitewash without his help!)

The new Public editor of the Times is Byron Calame, aka "Call me". I am sure he would welcome an opportunity to explain why the DNC chairman is disavowing anti-Semitic pamphlets and remarks from within his own party and the Times is ignoring it.

E-mail -- public@nytimes.com

MORE: I do find in the Saturday paper, by looking carefully, "regrets" from Sen. Durbin about "his comments earlier this week comparing American interrogators at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to Nazis."

June 17, 2005

On that subject, this story from the Thursday Times was widely overlooked, but has lots of news both good and bad. A few highlights:

First, on the "too few troops" theme:

Nine months ago the American military laid siege to this city in
northwestern Iraq and proclaimed it freed from the grip of insurgents.
Last month, the Americans returned in force - to reclaim it once again.

After the battle here in September the military left behind fewer
than 500 troops to patrol a region twice the size of Connecticut. With
so few troops and the local police force in shambles, insurgents came
back and turned Tal Afar, a dusty, agrarian city of about 200,000
people, into a way station for the trafficking of arms and insurgent
fighters from nearby Syria - and a ghost town of terrorized residents
afraid to open their stores, walk the streets or send their children to
school.

It is a cycle that has been repeated in rebellious cities
throughout Iraq, and particularly those in the Sunni Arab regions west
and north of Baghdad, where the insurgency's roots run deepest.

"We have a finite number of troops," said Maj. Chris Kennedy,
executive officer of the Third Armored Cavalry Regiment, which arrived
in Tal Afar several weeks ago. "But if you pull out of an area and
don't leave security forces in it, all you're going to do is leave the
door open for them to come back. This is what our lack of combat power
has done to us throughout the country. In the past, the problem has
been we haven't been able to leave sufficient forces in towns where
we've cleared the insurgents out."

While officials in Washington say the military has all the troops
it needs, on-the-ground battle commanders in the most violent parts of
Iraq - in cities like Ramadi, Mosul and Mahmudiya - have said privately
that they need more manpower to pacify their areas and keep them that
way.

Next, on US troops being greeted as liberators (and where is that Hitchens link?)

Two weeks ago more than 1,000 troops from the new regiment poured
into Biaj, a town of 15,000 people about 40 miles southwest of Tal
Afar, where insurgents had destroyed the police station, and the mayor
and the police fled last fall. Soldiers eventually searched every house
in the town, capturing more than a dozen suspected insurgents without a
shot being fired.

Biaj faces a severe water shortage and trash and sewage fill the
streets. But the markets and neighborhoods teem with children who give
passing American patrols waves and a thumbs-up. Indeed, the town
appears to show what happens if there are enough troops to pacify an
area and police it effectively afterward. But commanders plan to
withdraw all but 150 American troops and leave a battalion of about 500
Iraqi soldiers and 200 police officers in Biaj.

Finally, on whether the Iraqis will give up before we do:

Real leadership in Tal Afar lies with the 82 tribal leaders. Angered by
the attacks and emboldened by the enlarged American military presence
here, some sheiks have become outspoken critics of the insurgency. On
June 4, at great risk to their own lives, more than 60 attended a
security conference at Al Kasik Iraqi Army base near here. To the
surprise of Iraqi and American commanders who organized the gathering,
many sheiks demanded a Falluja-style military assault to rid Tal Afar
of insurgents and complained that American forces do not treat terror
suspects roughly enough.

Folks who want to believe this is a quagmire can point to plenty of evidence. Folks who want to beleive we can win this can show plenty of reasons, too.

David Gelertner, writing in the LA Times, slaps Sen. Dick Durbin for his comments comparing prisoner abuse at Guantanamo with Pol Pot, gulags and Nazis.

My suggestion - the next time the Senator from Illinois is speaking on the subject of prisoner abuse and finds himself grasping for an historical parallel, perhaps he could invoke the proud history of the great city of Chicago:

Over the last two decades, Chicago, Illinois has earned the
reputation of having one of the highest rates of police coerced false
confessions in the United States. Many documented cases involved the
use of unusually brutal tactics, including electric shock, beatings and
using a plastic bag to restrict oxygen. The problem got so out of hand
that the Chicago Police Department was forced to conduct an internal
investigation to weed out corrupt officers who were known to conduct
cruel interrogations.

At the center of abuse allegations was former Commander Jon Burge,
who allegedly tortured one hundred eight men between 1973 and 1991,
according to a Chicago NBC5.com article. Burge denies the claims. The
accusations began in February 1982 after the murder of two police
officers during a routine traffic stop. Less than a week after the
slayings, Andrew Wilson was brought into the police station for
questioning. During that time, he claimed that several police officers,
including Burge, beat him, tried to suffocate him with a plastic bag,
electrically shocked him and forced him against a hot radiator, Rob
Warden said in a 2003 article for the Center on Wrongful Convictions...

I am assuming, perhaps incorrectly, that in Durbin's world there are stopping points between "Nice Guys" and "Nazis" - we are always on the lookout for nuance.

Michelle Malkin is noting MSM reaction; regrettably, that is not a time-consuming task.

MORE: Dave Nalle at Blogcritics does a good job of deploring both prisoner abuse and Sen. Durbin's rhetorical excess.

And some folks seem to think that Sen. Durbin is an American hero for finally revealing the previously untold story of Gitmo. Please. The NY Times magazine had a cover story on torture and the American Way just last week.

The Times runs an article on globalization in the business section (clever, that). We liked this:

Globalization: It's Not Just Wages

Who is the biggest exporter of German-made washing machines to the
United States? Not Miele or Bosch-Siemens, or any other German
manufacturer. It is the American appliance maker, Whirlpool, the
company proudly reports.

Never mind the higher labor cost - $32 an hour, including benefits,
versus $23 in the United States. The necessary technology existed in
Germany when Whirlpool decided to sell front-loading washers to
Americans. So did a trained work force and a Whirlpool factory already
making a European version of the front loader.

...

Whirlpool's executives take issue with analysts who declare that
low foreign wages, particularly in China and elsewhere in Asia,
combined with generous subsidies from those countries, will keep the
global production networks mobile. Company executives say the manpower
required to make its appliances is declining, diluting the drawing
power of lower wages. One hour of labor, for example, goes into each of
the 20,000 top-loaders coming off the line daily at Clyde, down from
2.5 hours five years ago.

"We may pay $23 an hour in Clyde, including benefits, versus $3 in
Mexico versus $1 in China," Mr. Fettig said. "But for one hour of
labor, the difference won't begin to cover the shipping costs, let
alone the investment it would take to build a new factory in Mexico or
a new factory in China."

The Clyde factory, which employs 2,000 people, is billed as a jewel
in Whirlpool's production network - an efficient, partly automated
operation whose experienced workers possess a "tribal knowledge" of
their product that pays off in quality and cost saving. But if the
Clyde factory did not already exist, Mr. Fettig would not put it there.
"I'd probably put it in Mexico," he said.

The Toledo Blade's reports on Coingate - the unfolding tale of how Ohio's Bureau of
Workers' Compensation misused funds - deserve much more national
attention than they have received so far. For one thing, it's an
entertaining story that seems to get weirder by the week. More
important, it's an object lesson in what happens when you have
one-party rule untrammeled by any quaint notions of independent
oversight.

In April, The Blade reported that the bureau, which provides financial
support for workers injured on the job, had invested $50 million in
Capital Coin, a rare-coin trading operation run by Tom Noe, an
influential Republican fund-raiser.

...Meanwhile, The Blade uncovered an even bigger story:
the Bureau of Workers' Compensation invested $225 million in a hedge
fund managed by MDL Capital, whose chairman had strong political
connections. When this investment started to go sour, the bureau's
chief financial officer told another top agency official that he had
been told to "give MDL a break."

By October 2004, state officials knew that MDL had lost almost the
entire investment, but they kept the loss hidden until this month.

How could such things happen? The answer, it has become clear, lies
in a web of financial connections between state officials and the
businessmen who got to play with state funds.

Oh, boy, politicos and businessman in bed together - wake me up if the subject turns to cattle futures, real estate, and balked S&L investigations.

Krugman presents the Big Picture:

Now, politicians and businessmen are always in a position to do each
other lucrative favors. Government is relatively clean when politicians
are sufficiently afraid of scandal to resist temptation. But when a
political machine controls all branches of government, and those
officials charged with oversight are also reliably partisan,
politicians feel safe from investigation. Their inhibitions dissolve,
and they take full advantage of their position, until the scandals
become too big to hide.

In other words, Ohio's state government today is a lot like Boss
Tweed's New York. Unfortunately, a lot of other state governments look
similar - and so does Washington.

...The message from Ohio is that long-term dominance by a political
machine leads to corruption, regardless of the policies that machine
follows or the ideology it claims to represent.

And he concludes with some ritualistic Rep-bashing (I can almost smell the incense, but that might be this especially aromatic blend I am sipping). [UPDATE: Somehow Krugman misses all these Dems and independents with union ties found by RedState - a majority of the oversight board, actually.]

So what does it mean? Surely the Earnest Prof does not expect his metropolitan readers to give a rat's rear area about financial shenanigans in Ohio. We have Eliot Spitzer to keep an eye on - NYC is the Big Leagues of financial scandal, and all we want or need to know about Ohio is that Columbus is where the Yankees have a farm team.

So here is the Bold, Caffeine Enhanced Theory (and do not attempt this at home!) - this column can only be read as a subtly disguised Hillary-basher. The ominous warnings about the perils of one party rule, the cozy financial dealings - he is taking us to Arkansas.

And why might the Earnest Prof be so reluctant to board the Hillary bus? Well, he was passed over for a spot in Clinton I, and showed his characteristic warmth and good humor after his rejection, so he may be on the outs with the future Ins. Or he may be heeding the guidance of his colleague Brad DeLong, who parked himself in the "Anybody But HER!" camp two years ago.

Time will tell. But if the next three years bring more of these disguised Hillary hit pieces, I will stand ready to decode them!

Meanwhile, this column also embeds a deeper riddle, with a funnier answer. Krugman identifies by name the chairman of the coin dealing company, but skips right past the chairman of MDL Capital. Why?

Why indeed, when a bit of research tells us that MDL Capital was founded by Mark D. Lay? How often does heaven rain these delightful coincidences down upon the Earnest Prof? Here is a name that evokes both Ken Lay *and* Tom DeLay in a column bashing Evil Reps for financial scandals - can it get any better, and how did Krugman miss this?

I'm only guessing here, but what may have given the Professor pause is this:

Mark D. Lay, an Aliquippa native who built his MDL Capital Management into the fourth-largest minority owned asset management firm in the country, appeared to be riding high in 2003.

In June of that year, the politically connected and civic-minded Lay
was named Ernst & Young's Western Pennsylvania Entrepreneur of the
Year for financial services. Four months later, Gov. Ed Rendell and the
deputy premier of Bermuda joined Lay as he opened his firm's new
headquarters on Smithfield Street.

Not so evident at the time was the mounting pressure some investors
were putting on Lay and MDL, whose list of public and private clients
ranged from the National Basketball Association to Allegheny County.
Even as Lay offered in September 2003 to help the $14 billion Ohio
Bureau of Workers' Compensation fund reduce its exposure to an
anticipated rise in long-term interest rates, other clients were
dropping him for subpar performances.

...

Lay, named one of the Top 50 African Americans on Wall Street by Black
Enterprise Magazine, still lives in Aliquippa and teaches Sunday school
at Tried Stone Baptist Church.

His higher profile engagements include serving as a director of the
Pittsburgh History and Landmarks Foundation, the Manchester Youth
Development Center, Howard University's School of Business, Beaver
County Head Start, and the Negro Educational Emergency Drive.

In the pension fund business where political ties frequently open doors to business, Lay had his share.

In Ohio, eyebrows were raised by the fact that MDL Capital's chief
compliance officer is Mildred O. Forbes, daughter of Cleveland NAACP
President George Forbes. The elder Forbes is also a member of the Ohio
Bureau of Workers' Compensation oversight board. George Forbes said
yesterday he will step down.

We're talking about personal payoffs: bargain vacations for the
governor's chief of staff at Mr. Noe's Florida home, the fact that MDL
Capital employs the daughter of one of the members of the workers'
compensation oversight board, and more.

I have not yet verified that Cleveland NAACP President George Forbes is a Democrat, but I'll go on a limb here and bet he is. In fact, as some Dems bitterly recall, there are almost as many Dems as Reps in Ohio (Almost!). I'm guessing this little fact, if disclosed, might have jarred Krugman's moralistic tale.

[UPDATE: RedState thumps this point - of the five commission members, two were Dems and one was an independent with strong union ties. Oh, those evil Republicans!]

I wish I were done, since it has been delightful so far, but Mark D. Lay sounds like a good man with an interesting defense, and one might have hoped that an economist such as Paul Krugman would weigh in on it.

Howard Kurtz provides an overview of the MSM coverage of the Downing Street Debacle, but leaves out this gem from Nancy Pelosi, who has become my favorite Congressperson today:

She credited blogs for focus on the Downing Street minutes, which
assert that “intelligence was being fixed” to build a case for war.

“The currency that you all have given the Downing Street memo is
very important,” she remarked, though she admitted she had yet to read
the document. “I think it’s further corroboration. I don’t think that
it comes as any news to anyone, because the intelligence was never
there to begin with.”

"Very important"! Not quite important enough for her to read, and not important for its news value - "I don’t think that
it comes as any news to anyone" - but very important nonetheless.

Where can I send my contribution? With her and Howard leading the way, all is well with the world.

MORE: OK, my daughters assure me that "<3" can only mean "heart", but to me it looks like a floppy ice cream cone. Which also captues my view of Ms. Pelosi, but I worry about the widening generation gap.

Nick Kristof wrote a column on Tuesday imploring people to get behind Mukhtaran Bibi; the NY Times editors added their voices to the call on Wednesday:

Mukhtaran Bibi was sentenced by a tribal council to be gang-raped
because her younger brother supposedly had relations with a woman from
a higher caste. After the rape by four men, she was forced by village
leaders to walk home nearly naked in front of a jeering crowd.

Ms. Mukhtaran was unbowed. She testified against her persecutors in
court, started two schools in her village, established a shelter for
abused women and bought a van that is used as an ambulance in the area.
She has also spoken out against honor killings, rapes and other attacks
on women.

Her guts in daring to oppose the feudalistic elements of rural
Pakistani society earned her invitations from all over the world,
including from the Asian-American Network Against Abuse of Women, which
asked her to visit the United States this Saturday. But before she
could get here, General Musharraf's government arrested her. Pakistan
also released her attackers, who had been in prison since they were
convicted of raping her. Pakistani newspapers report that the
government, bizarrely, is worried that Ms. Mukhtaran might malign
Pakistan's image if she is allowed to go abroad - as if it has not
taken care of that rather ably by itself.

This Thursday, the Times (and the AP) report that "Pakistan Lifts Travel Restrictions on Rape Victim". The good guys win!

The Pakistan government has lifted a foreign travel ban on the victim of a high profile gang rape, Mukhtar Mai [aka Mukhtaran Bibi; Googlers take note].

But Ms Mai has told the BBC that her passport has been confiscated so the move is meaningless.

The State Dept. press spokesperson described this case in his opening remarks on Wednesday:

MR. MCCORMACK: Good afternoon, everybody. I have a brief statement to open up with and we'll get right into questions.

The opening statement is with respect to the Mukhtiar Mai case in Pakistan. The
United States expects Pakistan's leaders to honor their pledge to
protect the basic human rights of their citizens, including the freedom
to travel. Mukhtiar Mai met with U.S. Embassy officials today in
Islamabad. She is a courageous woman who is a victim of a horrendous
crime. Ms. Mai is welcome to travel to the United States at any time.
We were confronted with, what I can only say, was an outrageous
situation where her attackers were ordered to be freed while she had
restrictions on her travel placed on her. We conveyed our views about
these restrictions to the senior levels of the Pakistani Government.
The Government of Pakistan informed us today that Ms. Mai has been
removed from its Exit Control List, permitting her to travel out of
Pakistan. We have also advised Pakistani officials that she was invited
to the United States by a Pakistani organization based in the U.S.

We presume they do not intend to be mocked.

Ezra Klein has an e-mail list of various Pakistani agencies that are eager to hear from the free world.

And we hope the NY Times editors will push a bit harder before running these reassuring stories.

Virginia Postrel, writing in the Times, delivers some real breakthrough material from the social sciences - more police on the streets can reduce street crime!

A cheap shot artist would cite this unsurprising result as confirming the need for a bit of political diversity in the halls of our nation's academia - surely this cannot be news.

But surely it can be! Just last December, the good people of the great state of Minnesota were vexed by this puzzle, and here is an earnest pushback by a self-described "paleoconservatarian". His theme - no one knows if more cops help or hinder a reduction in crime.

The problem, as the authors explain in their lead paragraph, is that using statistical methods to separate cause and effect has been a challenge that has confounded past studies:

Do police deter crime? A majority of studies surveyed found that either there is no relationship or increases in the number of police are associated with increases in the level of crime.(1) Most economists are suspicious of these results. It is no surprise to find that places with an inordinate amount of crime tend to employ a large police force. Nor is it unreasonable to suspect that jurisdictions increase the size of their police forces when they witness or expect an increase in the level of crime. Thus, neither cross-sectional nor time-series analyses can credibly identify a causal effect of police on crime.

We will pass the baton to Ms. Postrel to see how this was overcome:

WHEN Jonathan M. Klick worked in Washington, he noticed a striking
effect every time the terrorism alert level went from its usual yellow
("elevated") to the more urgent orange ("high").

"When the terror alert level went up," he recalled in an interview,
"you all of a sudden saw zillions of cops around the Capitol and around
the Mall."

The pattern gave Professor Klick, now a professor of law and
economics at Florida State University, an idea for how to examine a
tough social science question: Do more police officers in fact reduce
crime?

The answer may seem obvious, but many social scientists have argued
that the number of police officers has no effect on crime rates and may
even increase them. "If you look at the studies, particularly in the
criminology literature, it's either no effect or actually a positive
effect," Professor Klick said.

...

To separate cause and effect, researchers need a "natural
experiment" - in this case, an event that changes the number of police
officers for reasons having nothing to do with the crime rate. The
crime rates before and after the change can then be compared.

Changes in the terror alert level provided just the sort of natural
experiment Professors Klick and Tabarrok needed, because the shifts in
police deployment are big, making effects easier to spot. The alert
levels - and hence the number of officers on the street - go up and
down over time, providing multiple tests. And since the number of
police officers fluctuates over days or weeks, rather than months or
years, any new officers are unlikely to be there because of
crime-related expansions of the force.

The two economists looked at daily crime statistics in Washington
from March 12, 2002, to July 30, 2003. During that time, the terror
alert level rose and fell four times. "On high-alert days," they wrote,
"total crimes decrease by an average of seven crimes per day, or
approximately 6.6 percent."

OK, now we know.

MORE: Another point a cheap shot artist would raise - back when Bill Clinton was claiming credit for putting 100,000 new cops on the beat and helping to reduce crime, why was the "reality based community" silent on the lack of evidence supporting a causal relationship between more police and less crime? Or did Clinton's involvement make that an acceptable faith-based initiative?

Also see Clinton's 1999 SOTU; or his 1993 SOTU. Or any mainstream politican from recorded history (but I am cheap-shotting the silent academics, not the ignorant pols).

ALMOST DONE: The Heritage Foundation puzzled over this in 2001, and had some seemingly snide comments here:

The theories of deterrence and incapacitation have been challenged by those
who believe that police activities have little effect on crime since
criminals rarely weigh the costs and benefits of illegal activities
before they engage in them. For example, criminologists Michael R.
Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi assert that to commit a crime, an
"obvious opportunity coupled with a lack of self-control is all that is
required."13Further,
the "offender sees a momentary opportunity to get something for nothing
and he seizes it. These facts delineate the natural limits of law
enforcement."14These
experts conclude that "no evidence exists that the augmentation of
police forces or equipment, differential patrol strategies, or
differential intensities of surveillance have an effect on crime rates."

June 15, 2005

...the
House Democratic leader made striking comments about the mainstream
media, even asserting that reporters had told her journalists couldn’t
tell the Democrats’ story because they feared losing access.

“I’ve had reporters say to me, I have orthodontia, I have tuition, I
have mortgage, I need access, I’m not writing your story,” Pelosi
remarked.

Yet the San Francisco Democrat seems to take the media’s silence in
stride, asserting that blogs and online media have brought a fresh
vitality to the political landscape.

“It’s very exciting,” she said. “What I like about it is that you
can know what somebody is saying. You don’t need an interpreter. You
don’t need a reporter who is going to change what you say.”

“It is, as you say, the raw story,” she added. “If you depend on the
print press, they will either leave you out of the story, or
mischaracterize what you are saying, or you get two sentences in a
twenty-five paragraph story which doesn’t give weight to the argument
that you have.”

Uh huh - the other thing those evil reporters in the print press may do (unlike the placid "Listening Therapy" practitioners at Raw Story) is ask some follow up questions. Over to Howard Kurtz:

Some thoughts: I seriously doubt that journalists told Pelosi they
needed to maintain "access" to the administration to pay their
mortgages, since even the best reporters have little inside access to
the Bushies, who generally read from the same set of talking points.
When The Post asked Peolsi, she said one younger reporter had said this -- one probably too young to have a mortgage.

Let's eliminate the filter! Following the link he provided, we find Ms. Pelosi's response paraphrased thusly:

Asked Friday to name a journalist who made such comments, her office
said it was "a younger reporter just starting out," but it declined to
name the scribe.

Where is the story of the Downing Street documents headed? On the one hand, the MSM seem to be engaging in a bit of wagon-circling as they explain why it was OK that they skipped this story. Here are the editors of the WaPo:

AFTER LAGGING for months, debate on Iraq in Washington is picking up
again. That's a needed and welcome development, but much of the
discussion is being diverted to the wrong subject. War opponents have
been trumpeting several British government memos from July 2002, which
describe the Bush administration's preparations for invasion, as
revelatory of President Bush's deceptions about Iraq. Bloggers have
demanded to know why "the mainstream media" have not paid more
attention to them. Though we can't speak for The Post's news
department, the answer appears obvious: The memos add not a single fact
to what was previously known about the administration's prewar
deliberations. Not only that: They add nothing to what was publicly
known in July 2002.

After about the 200th e-mail from a stranger demanding that I cease my
personal cover-up of something called the Downing Street Memo, I
decided to read it. (By mentioning 200 e-mails, I do not intend to
brag. I'm sure Tom Friedman got many more.) It's all over the
blogosphere and Air America, the left-wing talk-radio network: This is
the smoking gun of the Iraq war. It is proof positive that President
Bush was determined to invade Iraq a year before he did so. The whole
"weapons of mass destruction" concern was phony from the start, and the
drama about inspections was just kabuki: going through the motions.

Although it is flattering to be thought personally responsible for
allowing a proven war criminal to remain in office, in the end I don't
buy the fuss. Nevertheless, I am enjoying it, as an encouraging sign of
the left's revival. Developing a paranoid theory and promoting it to
the very edge of national respectability takes ideological
self-confidence. It takes a critical mass of citizens with extreme
views and the time and energy to obsess about them. It takes a
promotional infrastructure and the discipline to settle on a story
line, disseminate it and stick to it.

And of course, yesterday David Sanger of the Times announced that the original memo had been refuted by subsequent documents. Brad DeLong chose "takes a dive" to describe this; I settled for "an uncharacteristic stretch".

But the plot thickens - new documents from March of 2002 have been leaked, and the LA Times has them. I am intrigued by this:

Another memo, from British Foreign Office political director Peter
Ricketts to Foreign Secretary Jack Straw on March 22, 2002, bluntly
stated that the case against Hussein was weak because the Iraqi leader
was not accelerating his weapons programs and there was scant proof of
links to Al Qaeda.

..."Much better, as you [Straw] have suggested, to make the objective
ending the threat to the international community from Iraqi WMD before
Saddam uses it or gives it to terrorists," he said. A U.N. Security
Council resolution demanding renewal of weapons inspections, he says,
would be a "win/win."

"Either [Hussein] against all the odds allows Inspectors to
operate freely, in which case we can further hobble his WMD programs,
or he blocks/hinders, and we are on stronger grounds for switching to
other methods," he wrote.

Wait - the whole UN charade was instigated by the Brits? Blair lied, people died?

But why call it a charade? The Brit plan was that Hussein would comply, or or be invaded. Just because compliance was not likely, it does not follow that war was inevitable, or Bush's preferred choice.

But I exhort the Dems to keep screaming about this. And if you find anything interesting, scream louder. Thanks.

Oh, I can't resist - let's give the last word to Nancy Pelosi, who blasted the MSM in an interview with Raw Story:

She credited blogs for focus on the Downing Street minutes, which
assert that “intelligence was being fixed” to build a case for war.

“The currency that you all have given the Downing Street memo is
very important,” she remarked, though she admitted she had yet to read
the document. “I think it’s further corroboration. I don’t think that
it comes as any news to anyone, because the intelligence was never
there to begin with.”

Comic emphasis added.

UPDATE: Howard Kurtz reviews the breaking of the log-jam on MSM coverage, but neglects to mention Nancy "I haven't read it 'cause its not news" Pelosi.

The normally omniscient Mickey errs grievously in assessing John McCain's prospects as a third party candidate:

1. Many readers suggested that a plurality win by McCain could easily translate
into an outright electoral college victory, thus avoiding the House
entirely. "Clinton won 370 electoral votes with only 43% of the popular
vote in 1992," notes reader J.S. Ah, but this assumes states keep the winner-take-all statutes
that govern the distribution of electoral votes in 48 states. "There
was ... a lot or popular pressure recently to ditch [these statutes]
anyway on principle," says D.P, .who predicts that if McCain threatens
to sweep up huge blocs of electoral votes with only a 45% showing we'll
see "a lot of high minded posturing from Dems and Reps about ... how we
should [follow] Nebraska and Maine now and allocate electors on a
proportional basis."

Not so fast! Maine and Nebraska award the electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis within each Congressional district. The two at-large seats associated with the Senate are awarded on a statewide winner-take-all basis.

Under those rules, if McCain won each district by 40/30/30, he would sweep the state.

What Mickey's correspondents seem to be thinking of is Colorado, which was considering a statewide proportional allocation under Amendment 36. This failed as a ballot initiative in 2004. We salute the wisdom of Colorado's voters, since we dislike the proportional scheme for reasons not described here. (Other Electoral College reform ideas here).

Now, what about McCain's chances as an independent in 2008? As a strong centrist, presumably with a Democrat for a running mate, he will probably be the second (or first!) choice in states both Red and Blue, so the strategic voting scenarios are intriguing.

In a pale Red state, for example, might strategically-voting Dems plus moderate Reps rally enough votes to put McCain in first? Or might Dems hope to steal a Red state by uniting behind their seeming loser and capitalizing on a divided conservative vote?

And could the opposite scenario play out in pale Blue states? Might enough moderate Dems defect to McCain that rock-solid Reps could steal a state (metaphorically, of course)?